Somebody said.

Not even AI.

China delivers phones like crazy, so that must be it.

Free versions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are primarily model-only. They rely on what was learned during training, not on live web searches by default. Most everyday questions are answered from internal knowledge, not by “looking things up” in real time.

Web access exists, but it’s gated. When a free tier uses the web, it’s usually limited, automated, and opaque. You don’t get a full research session, multiple sources, or transparent citations unless the product explicitly says it’s browsing. Paid tiers are far more likely to trigger live searches, show sources, or let the user control when browsing happens.

The key distinction is this. Training data is not web browsing. A model can sound current without checking anything. If you ask about fast-changing facts, prices, court rulings, or today’s news, free tiers may answer confidently and still be outdated.
Rule of thumb: if accuracy depends on what happened recently or on verifying sources, assume free tiers did not actively research it unless you are explicitly shown sources. Treat them as very smart books, not librarians with internet access.

That's what ChatGPT PLUS told me.

No parody, watch the videos where students are interviewed on their campus.

How long is a quarter of an hour?
20 minutes.
How do you figure?
Well, 60 divided by 4 is 20, duh.

Ralph the Wonder Llama.

I read a book (or 2) a shift for 40 years, because I had a job where I 'waited' mostly for something to happen for me to fix.

After retirement, I doubled the reading for 14 years now.
I'm on my 7th or 8th Kindle and I donated about 6000 books to the local library as soon as I got my first one.
And I got a free room after that. :-)

I preferred Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

The Catcher in the Rye is a teenager complaining. Holden Caulfield is judgmental, repetitive, moody, obsessed with “phonies”, and often insufferable. If you read it as a plot novel, it feels thin. If you read it at school, when teachers insist it’s “important”, it can feel like being trapped in someone else’s sulk.

What that reading misses is that Holden isn’t just whining, he’s unraveling. The book is one long nervous breakdown told in real time. His sarcasm, fixation on hypocrisy, and looping thoughts are coping mechanisms for grief and trauma, especially the death of his younger brother Allie. He is depressed, dissociating, and terrified of adulthood because adulthood looks like betrayal and loss.

The title gives the game away. Holden fantasises about being the “catcher in the rye”, saving children from falling off a cliff into adulthood. That’s not arrogance, it’s panic. He wants to freeze innocence because he can’t survive more loss.

Adults who reread it often flip. As a teenager, Holden sounds like you. As an adult, he sounds like a kid in serious trouble that nobody is helping. The book endures not because he’s right about the world, but because Salinger nailed the voice of a mind cracking under pressure.

So yes, it’s a teen complaining. It’s also a remarkably precise portrait of grief, depression and alienation, disguised as complaining because that’s how those things sound from the inside.

it's using a Jimmy Kimmel AI avatar to post anti-Trump videos.

..using AI to handle NPCs and make their dialog not as moronic, you could do that right NOW!

And allow people to book any of their hotels on a single site.

Maybe call it Booking.com?

"Do people really prefer artificial flavors in their food? If not then why would they prefer artificial content? "

You think 'natural' flavors are 'better'?

What those “natural flavors” are:

'Natural' Strawberry flavor mainly comes from aroma molecules made by fermenting sugars with moulds or bacteria, or extracted from lignin in wood chips.
Vanilla is mostly vanillin from wood pulp or fermented rice bran.
Raspberry flavor often comes from fungal fermentation producing raspberry ketone.
Citrus flavors are usually terpene fractions distilled from orange or lemon peel waste.
Butter flavor is diacetyl from bacterial fermentation.
Almond flavor is benzaldehyde, usually from stone fruit pits or fermentation. ...

All of this is legally “natural” because the molecules come from plants or microbes, not because they resemble the food on the label.

The label says strawberry, the chemistry says efficiency.

But they cannot defend that right.

...proving malicious intent.